Privacy Policy

Public Privacy Policy
Kids Privacy Policy

Thank you for visiting witf.org and its associated sub-domains. As an extension of our broadcast mission, we want your visit to witf.org to inform and entertain you. We know you don’t want the information you provide us shared indiscriminately. Here we explain what information WITF (and our third-party vendors (collectively “we”) acting on our behalf to help deliver the services and operate and analyze use of the Site), collect, what we do with the information, and what controls you have over the information collected. We’re committed to ensuring the privacy of your personally identifiable information, and to protecting your ability to make financial transactions and transmit your personal data with full confidence.

The privacy policy set forth here refers solely to witf.org, and it’s associated sub-domains such as, but not limited to, netcommunities.witf.org, calendar.witf.org , and feeds.witf.org. Please read it carefully, and if you have any questions or concerns, please contact us. Also, note that witf.org links to numerous other sites, such as PBS and NPR. Please consult those sites to learn more about their policies.

1. WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU

We collect two types of information from you: a) Personally identifiable information, includes personal information (such as your name, address, e-mail address, telephone number, credit card information and/or other identifying information) you voluntarily supply upon request when you register for our website, make a donation, complete a survey, register for an online discussion, enter a contest or provide your e-mail address; and b) Non-personally identifiable information, for example IP Addresses and cookies, which includes tracking information collected as you navigate through our site. Uses of this information are discussed in Section 2 below.

A. Personally Identifiable Information

We will not collect personally identifiable information from you, other than what you supply to us on a voluntary basis upon request.

Registration for our websites:

Anyone can view our site, however some pages of the Site may require a free registration which enables full access to the information and resources offered throughout the Site. A unique email address (user name) and password must be supplied to register. By using the Site, you are agreeing to the conditions of our Terms of Use.

Paid Products and Services:

While the majority of our Site is free, we may now or in the future, charge fees for select products and services, such as purchases made through an online shop. To enable the purchase of these and other products we collect your telephone number, e-mail address, billing address and credit card information.

Support of WITF:

On certain pages within the Site we may now or in the future offer visitors the opportunity to make a donation in support of WITF or our programming. If a visitor chooses to make a donation, we will collect and store your telephone number, e-mail address, billing address and credit card information.

Forums, Feedback and Content Submissions:

On certain pages within the Site you can submit content to be published, make community postings, comments, suggestions, and vote. We may collect your name, address, and e-mail addresses in connection with these activities. We will indicate which information is required and which is optional. We may contact users regarding their submissions in certain circumstances.

Your submission of others’ Personally Identifiable Information:

On certain pages within the Site you can submit information about other people. For example, you may submit a person’s name and email address to send an article. This information will only be used for your intended purpose.

Contests, Sweepstakes, Surveys and Special Offers:

On occasion, we may collect personal information from users in connection with optional sweepstakes, surveys, contests or special offers. We will indicate which information is required and which is optional. Such information will be used as indicated at the time of collection.

E-Mail and E-mail Newsletters:

On occasion, we may collect personal information from users in connection with optional email and e-mail newsletters. We will indicate which information is required and which is optional. Such information will be used as indicated at the time of collection.

Marketing and Promotional Communications:

On occasion, we may collect personal information from users in connection with optional marketing and promotional communications from WITF, PBS, or a public broadcasting station. We will indicate which information is required and which is optional. Such information will be used as indicated at the time of collection.

B. Non-personally Identifiable Information

In addition to information that you provide to us, we (again, this is WITF and third party vendors) may also collect and store certain non-personally identifiable information automatically when you use the Site. This information helps us improve the experience you and other visitors have with the Site.

For example, we may collect your IP address, browser information and reference site domain, as well as related information such as the date on which you visit the Site. This information does not identify you personally and is only used in the aggregate.

As is common practice among web sites, we use “cookies” and similar technologies. In general, cookies — the informational files that your web browser places on your computer when you visit a website — are used on this Site to track and analyze how you and other visitors use our Site. We use these cookies in order to improve the Site, to identify the source of visitors and what pages you use while on our site, to offer visitors interactive and/or personalized features that would not be possible without the cookies, to recall specific information to save visitors time when they return to the Site, to provide our sponsors targeted sponsorship opportunities, to provide visitors customized sponsorship messages or list of customized videos of interest, and to identify usage and statistical trends. By looking at this traffic we can better understand our community, which allows us to improve our Site and to provide you with an optimal experience and better service. Our sponsorship service vendors, which serve sponsorship messages onto our site, and third party vendors that measure and analyze the use of the Site for us, may also use their own cookies. At no time does the cookie reveal your name, address, or e-mail address (even if you have entered these in specific areas of the Site). The Site pages cannot extract any personally identifying information about you from what we receive via a cookie and your browser.

You can set your browser preferences to refuse cookies or to alert you when cookies are being sent. However, some parts of the Site will not function properly if you do so.

2. HOW DO WE USE INFORMATION GATHERED ON THE SITE

Neither WITF, nor our third-party vendors acting on our behalf to help deliver the services and operate the Site, will willfully disclose any personally identifiable information about our online users to any non-affiliated third party without first receiving the user’s permission, unless required by law. WITF’s affiliates include our local productions (such as Smart Talk, Health Smart, Explore PA), PBS, and other public broadcasting stations or programming.

In terms of our own use of information, we may use your personally identifiable information for the activities described in the previous sections, for the activities described when you submitted the information, or for internal and marketing promotional purposes as further described in this policy.

We will typically explain the extent of use at the time you are asked to provide personal information. If you do not want this information to be collected or used by us for these purposes, you can simply “opt out.” Under certain circumstances, opting out may prevent your participation in activities for which personal information is needed, as in contests.

As mentioned, in certain cases, we contract with other companies to provide services on our behalf. These service providers maintain customer databases with e-mail addresses of Site visitors who have provided them to us by registering at our site, signing up for a newsletter or email, e-mailing us questions about the service, donors who submit online contributions, or online buyers who make a purchase. We (which includes our service providers) will use these addresses to respond to the general purposes for which we collected the information, to provide services and to operate the Site, including to respond to inquiries; to process credit card payments, billing, and shipping; to process e-mail distribution; for list processing and analysis; for promotions management; to send information about WITF’s programs, services, or your local public broadcasting station’s membership/fundraising; or to correspond about a purchase or product offers. Our service providers have access to your personally identifiable information as necessary to provide certain services on our behalf. They are required to maintain the privacy of all such information in their possession or control and can only use the information on our behalf for the purpose that we have contracted them, for example sending you a newsletter. They are not authorized to use your information for any other purpose.

Similarly, personally identifiable information provided in connection with a donation will be shared with third parties who perform services to process the donation.

WITF will not sell, rent, lease, loan, trade, give, donate, transfer or exchange their membership or donor names to, with or from any local, state, or federal candidate for public office, authorized committee for such a candidate, or political party for any purpose whatsoever, except as required by law.

If at any time you would like to check or update our record of your information, please let us know by using the witf.org Contact Us page, calling the WITF Main Switchboard (717-704-3000, Monday-Friday, 8am-5pm EST), or writing to us (WITF, 4801 Lindle Road, Harrisburg, PA 17111).

We will not sell, exchange, or lend e-mail addresses to any non-affiliated third party, without your permission. However, we or our service providers may release personally identifiable information if we believe in good faith that the law or legal process requires it, we have received a valid administrative request from a law enforcement agency, or such release is necessary to protect anyone’s rights, property or safety.

On certain pages, we may now or in the future, offer visitors the opportunity to provide comments, messages or other user-generated text, content or materials (collectively “User Materials”). Any information that you disclose when posting a message to these areas, such as your name, screen name or ID used, becomes public. In addition, the information that you disclose in these areas may be used by us for promotional and marketing purposes. We are not responsible for any personally identifiable information that you choose to disclose in these public areas. Further, WITF, its production units, public broadcasting station affiliates and their licensees, may use, copy, sublicense, modify, transmit, publicly perform, display, create derivative works of, host, index, cache, tag, encode, and/or adapt any User Materials, and any information contained therein, in any and all media formats or channels, whether now known or hereafter devised, including, but not limited to, the Site, public broadcasting station web sites, other third party web sites, over the air (on radio or television), and on mobile platforms.

We reserve the right to send you e-mail relating to your account status. This includes order confirmations, renewal/expiration notices, notices of credit-card problems, other transactional e-mails and notifications about major changes to our Site and/or to our Privacy Policy. If you have registered for online discussions or other services, you may receive e-mail specific to your participation in those activities.

We offer several e-mail newsletters and emails. We will always provide a clear and convenient method of unsubscribing to our e-mailings. If you no longer wish to receive a specific newsletter, follow the “unsubscribe” instructions located in each newsletter or email, or by going to the Site’s Contact Us page and send us a message. We will update our records as soon as possible.

WITF, with the assistance from time to time of its third party service vendors, uses non-identifying aggregate information to analyze use of and better design the Site and to share with third parties in aggregate form only as appropriate. For example, we may tell a third party that a certain number of users accessed a particular video on our Site. However, we will not disclose any information that could be used to identify those users.

3. SECURITY OF INFORMATION

WITF has in place what we believe to be appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online. Credit card information provided on the Site is protected against unauthorized use by Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) security features. The SSL protocol is the industry standard method for creating an encrypted, secure connection between your web browser and a web server, such as the Site’s server. You should, however, keep in mind that no Internet or e-mail transmission is ever fully secure or error free. Because most e-mail is not encrypted, you should take special care in deciding what information you send to us via e-mail.

4. CHILDREN’S GUIDELINES

witf.org is a general audience site and does not knowingly collect or store personally identifiable information about children under the age of 13.

Any portions of our Site that are directed to children under the age of 13 (e.g., the kids section under the Education section) comply with COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) standards, which are in addition to witf.org policies. For complete guidelines on children’s information collection, please visit the WITF KIDS PRIVACY POLICY which is located below.

5. CORRECTIONS TO PERSONAL DATA; OPTING OUT

Please Contact Us to a) correct or update any personal information in the WITF database that you state is erroneous, b) opt-out of future communications from WITF, or c) request WITF to make reasonable efforts to remove your personal information from the WITF online database, thereby canceling your profile, newsletter registration and other WITF registrations. This will not necessarily remove previous public comments and other User Materials submitted for public display on the Site. You should understand that it may be impossible to delete personal information entirely because of backups and records of deletions.

6. ACCEPTANCE OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY FOR WITF.ORG

By using this Site, you signify your agreement to the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy for witf.org. If you do not agree to these terms and conditions, please do not use this Site. We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change, modify, add, or remove portions of this policy at any time. Please check this page periodically for any changes. Your continued use of WITF .org following the posting of any changes to these terms shall mean that you have accepted those changes. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.

7. CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

Whenever this Privacy Policy for our Site changes, we will post the changes to the Site, and such changes will be effective immediately upon posting. If you do not agree to the changes, please do not continue to use the Site. Under certain circumstances, we may also elect to notify you of changes or updates to our Privacy Policy by additional means, such as posting a notice on the front page of our Site or sending you an e-mail if we have your e-mail address.

8. TERMS OF USE

Please also make sure to read witf.org’s Terms of Use to understand the additional terms and conditions which apply to your use of our Site.

Kids Privacy Policy

WITF takes great pride in the high-quality television, radio, and Web content we provide for children, as well as the public trust we have secured in doing so. As we move into providing an online Kids service on the Web, this trust becomes even more important to you, and to us. We believe the following understanding will enhance the safety, value and enjoyment of your child’s visits to WITF Online.

It is our goal to provide service on our site while maintaining our strong commitment to identifying children and protecting their privacy. When we collect information from our Web visitors, we routinely ask them to confirm whether they are older than 18 years of age. If we learn that a user is younger than 18, we will not store his/her personal information for future communication.

WITF does not willfully disclose to any third party any personally identifiable information about our online visitors who have identified themselves as younger than 18.

From time to time, we may offer contests, quizzes, and surveys in the Kids section of WITF Online. Our sole objective in these endeavors is to offer young visitors appropriate and entertaining interactive content. When we showcase online content specifically for young people that requires identifying information, we ask children to gain permission from a parent or caregiver first (e.g., “Hey, kids, before you enter our contest, make sure you get permission to participate from a parent or whoever takes care of you.”)

If we know a visitor is younger than 18, we collect parental/caregiver permission offline (by US mail, fax, or phone) before we mail any prizes to the child. If your child submits stories, artwork, written comments, or anything else for us to post on our site, he or she will be identified only by first name, age, and state.

You and your child’s use of this site are conditioned on your having accepted these terms. Please check this policy frequently, as it is subject to change from time to time, and your child’s continued use of the site is conditioned upon your acceptance of any modifications hereto.

We want to make this site a safe haven for where families to surf together, and where parents and caregivers are happy to have their children interact, learn, and play. If you have any comments or questions, we’d be happy to hear them.

Please see our WITF Online Privacy Policy for more information about our site’s overall practices and policies. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this policy, send us an e-mail at customerservice@witf.org